I think it's time to ban them. Villages have a sordid history of producing criminals. It's time to ban villages. If the immoral minority seeks to keep protecting these sordid lairs of death construction, then the right, and good majority should shoot them full of holes until all of their blood drains out. We must arm, and come fully packed and ready to oust folks from murderous villages, for they are the scourge of towns, and townships the world over. STOP THE VILLAGES!

Guess what? Where there are guns, there are people getting shot with guns. There are no places where people have no guns and yet nobody dies. There are places where nobody has guns but guess what? In those places, people get stabbed or beaten to death. It's almost as though guns were merely tools people use to enable themselves to kill more effectively.

Ooba Tooba:I think it's time to ban them. Villages have a sordid history of producing criminals. It's time to ban villages. If the immoral minority seeks to keep protecting these sordid lairs of death construction, then the right, and good majority should shoot them full of holes until all of their blood drains out. We must arm, and come fully packed and ready to oust folks from murderous villages, for they are the scourge of towns, and townships the world over. STOP THE VILLAGES!

The_Sponge:Ooba Tooba: I think it's time to ban them. Villages have a sordid history of producing criminals. It's time to ban villages. If the immoral minority seeks to keep protecting these sordid lairs of death construction, then the right, and good majority should shoot them full of holes until all of their blood drains out. We must arm, and come fully packed and ready to oust folks from murderous villages, for they are the scourge of towns, and townships the world over. STOP THE VILLAGES!

I prefer the term "hamlet".

Hey, the Dutch just came out with the term "scum villages" and I like that.

Gyrfalcon:Guess what? Where there are guns, there are people getting shot with guns. There are no places where people have no guns and yet nobody dies. There are places where nobody has guns but guess what? In those places, people get stabbed or beaten to death. It's almost as though guns were merely tools people use to enable themselves to kill more effectively.

No, no, no. Its the weapons. Look at England, they banned guns and they are a utopia. Oh, crap, they're not. But they've banned knives, and soon, they will ban trees. Because trees have big heavy limbs that you can use to hit people and therefore promote violence. After that, though, everyone will be safe there, forever.

And this really is a shocking story and would make me rethink any plan to go the Switzerland. 5 people shot. 5 people could never get injured by the same person in a country that has no guns....Switzerland has really turned into an unsafe hellhole because of the guns there...

Meh, the primary problem in the U.S. is that gun ownership is treated as a right. This is a problem because people don't measure the constitution up to any standard except for itself. "It's a good right because it's in the constitution" is simply not an argument, yet it's promoted as such by both the left and the right in this country.

Other countries like the ones mentioned above don't have this issue. Gun ownership is like owning a car - the regulations aren't the same, but they're both matters of utilitarian public policy. Once you take the rhetorical varnish off of the issue, there's a lot more room for level-headed policy-making.

So, Libs, the only solution is to repeal the 2nd amendment. The sooner that fact is accepted, the sooner it will actually happen. Wait, no, who am I kidding. We're doomed to continually flip the two sides of the Gang Banger - Rugged Cowboy coin forever. Viva la muerte.

Seth'n'Spectrum:Meh, the primary problem in the U.S. is that gun ownership is treated as a right. This is a problem because people don't measure the constitution up to any standard except for itself. "It's a good right because it's in the constitution" is simply not an argument, yet it's promoted as such by both the left and the right in this country.

So, the U. S. is founded on religion. The Constitution is our Bible, our Ten Commandments.

BarkingUnicorn:Seth'n'Spectrum: Meh, the primary problem in the U.S. is that gun ownership is treated as a right. This is a problem because people don't measure the constitution up to any standard except for itself. "It's a good right because it's in the constitution" is simply not an argument, yet it's promoted as such by both the left and the right in this country.

So, the U. S. is founded on religion. The Constitution is our Bible, our Ten Commandments.

Somehow, someway I think this is why America has amendments to the Constitution. If my memory of history serves me, I believe we once had slavery, women could not vote, etc. We changed that to roll with the times.

fusillade762:Mythbusting: Israel and Switzerland are not gun-toting utopias

WaPo's really gone to town on it - there's a companion piece on gun ownership from the following day's edition. The BBC's More or Less statistics programme also did a piece (mp3 link) on this a couple of weeks ago. Here's the sources for their numbers since they didn't include them in the podcast (#/% firearms homicides, firearm homicide/homicide rate per 100,000):

And since it inevitably comes up when such a comparison is made: there were 205 knife homicides for 2009/10 in the UK compared to 1,732 for the equivalent period in the U.S., which equates to knife homicide rates of 0.56 in the U.S. and 0.37 in the U.K. (i.e., you're still more likely to get knifed to death in the U.S.)

Seth'n'Spectrum:Meh, the primary problem in the U.S. is that gun ownership is treated as a right. This is a problem because people don't measure the constitution up to any standard except for itself. "It's a good right because it's in the constitution" is simply not an argument, yet it's promoted as such by both the left and the right in this country.

Other countries like the ones mentioned above don't have this issue. Gun ownership is like owning a car - the regulations aren't the same, but they're both matters of utilitarian public policy. Once you take the rhetorical varnish off of the issue, there's a lot more room for level-headed policy-making.

So, Libs, the only solution is to repeal the 2nd amendment. The sooner that fact is accepted, the sooner it will actually happen. Wait, no, who am I kidding. We're doomed to continually flip the two sides of the Gang Banger - Rugged Cowboy coin forever. Viva la muerte.

/dammit, I successfully resisted these threads for so long

The vast majority of legal gun owners, though, are responsible gun owners. There are over 270 million guns owned by about 100 million people, and how many of those people actually use any of their guns to commit a crime each day? Or each year? The number is very, very, very, very small. Guns being a right is not a problem. So why would you want to punish 100 million people because every year a handful of legal gun owners commit a crime with their guns?

Pete_T_Mann:Gyrfalcon: Guess what? Where there are guns, there are people getting shot with guns. There are no places where people have no guns and yet nobody dies. There are places where nobody has guns but guess what? In those places, people get stabbed or beaten to death. It's almost as though guns were merely tools people use to enable themselves to kill more effectively.

No, no, no. Its the weapons. Look at England, they banned guns and they are a utopia. Oh, crap, they're not. But they've banned knives, and soon, they will ban trees. Because trees have big heavy limbs that you can use to hit people and therefore promote violence. After that, though, everyone will be safe there, forever.

And this really is a shocking story and would make me rethink any plan to go the Switzerland. 5 people shot. 5 people could never get injured by the same person in a country that has no guns....Switzerland has really turned into an unsafe hellhole because of the guns there...

Clearly. If we were all naked and disarmed, there would be no violence! We'd all just sit around in peace and harmony and nakedness until someone rediscovered fists and fingernails...

Switzerland is, in fact, a very heavily armed country. Every male citizen is a soldier for most of his life (age 18 to 52, IIRC) and must be able to mobilize at a moment's notice. To this end, they all have their uniform and army rifles at home with exactly 3 bullets which they must be able to produce at all times.

My buddy in Geneva is part of an anti-tank unit, so in addition to his rifle and 3 bullets, he also has a bazooka and related ordinance at home.

capt.hollister:Switzerland is, in fact, a very heavily armed country. Every male citizen is a soldier for most of his life (age 18 to 52, IIRC) and must be able to mobilize at a moment's notice. To this end, they all have their uniform and army rifles at home with exactly 3 bullets which they must be able to produce at all times.

My buddy in Geneva is part of an anti-tank unit, so in addition to his rifle and 3 bullets, he also has a bazooka and related ordinance at home.

/Switzerland, home of heavily-armed neutrality

Fave slightly-off-topic WWII anecdote:

Supposedly Himmler asked some minister in Switzerland how big their army was, if Germany were to challenge their neutrality. "We currently have 100,000 soldiers in our armed forces," the minister said."Then what if I send 200,000 men over your border?" Himmler asked."Each of us will have to shoot twice," the minister replied.

Switzerland can brag about their marksmanship or citizen army all they want, but the REAL reason they arent on anyones invasion list is because the terrain sucks and there's nothing there resource wise to justify an invasion anyway.

If the Swiss had oil, or diamond mines or gold or hell just lots of fertile land, it would have switched hands at least 5 times in the last century alone.

Switzerland is in the top five for per capita firearm ownership. The Swiss army issues about 30,000 NEW Sturmgewehr 90s a year.

"Both countries require you to have a reason to have a gun. There isn't this idea that you have a right to a gun. You need a reason. And then you need to go back to the permitting authority every six months or so to assure them the reason is still valid."

FALSE, for Switzerland at least. There is absolutely no cause needed to own a gun in Switzerland. The part about having to go back every six months is ridiculously false, no such requirement exists for firearm ownership in Swizterland.

"Switzerland doesn't promote gun ownership."

FALSE again. You know those 30,000 machineguns, yes, real machineguns, not semiautomatics, the government hands out every year? Soldiers can BUY those at the end of their service and keep them. There are over a million privately owned machineguns in the hands of Swiss citizens, and that only comprises about 12 percent of privately owned firearms. Switzerland has one of the largest shooting events in the world every year, Feldschiessen, drawing in upwards of 250,000 people, which I believe is bigger than any such event in the United States.

"Switzerland has also been moving away from having widespread guns. The laws are done canton by canton, which is like a province. Everyone in Switzerland serves in the army, and the cantons used to let you have the guns at home. They've been moving to keeping the guns in depots. That means they're not in the household, which makes sense because the literature shows us that if the gun is in the household, the risk goes up for everyone in the household."

False again. The federal government guarantees the right to keep guns at home.

The part about "Switzerland has been moving to keeping guns in depots?"

FALSE. This is ludicrously inaccurate information perhaps based on a failed 2011 referendum "Für den Schutz vor Waffengewalt" in which, had it passed, military weapons would have to be kept in depots instead of homes. 75 percent of kantons rejected this measure. It is not even remotely close to becoming law, let alone the standing law as that retard suggests it is.

Seth'n'Spectrum:Meh, the primary problem in the U.S. is that gun ownership is treated as a right. This is a problem because people don't measure the constitution up to any standard except for itself. "It's a good right because it's in the constitution" is simply not an argument, yet it's promoted as such by both the left and the right in this country.

Other countries like the ones mentioned above don't have this issue. Gun ownership is like owning a car - the regulations aren't the same, but they're both matters of utilitarian public policy. Once you take the rhetorical varnish off of the issue, there's a lot more room for level-headed policy-making.

A "goo" right as opposed to a "bad" right? Do we really wnat to go there? Could we not apply the same standard to marriage for example. It is not a right but a licensed, regulated activity drivien by public policy. Or how about the "right" to an abortion or the "right" to tax payer provided"free" health care?

"Resistance to sudden violence, for the preservation not only of my person, my limbs, and life, but of my property, is an indisputable right of nature which I have never surrendered to the public by the compact of society, and which perhaps, I could not surrender if I would." (John Adams, Boston Gazette, Sept. 5, 1763, reprinted in The Works of John Adams 438 [Charles F. Adams ed., 1851])

"Arms in the hands of individual citizens may be used at individual discretion in private self-defense." (John Adams, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America [1787-1788])

"When we got organized as a country and we wrote a fairly radical Constitution with a radical Bill of Rights, giving a radical amount of individual freedom to Americans ... And so a lot of people say there's too much personal freedom. When personal freedom's being abused, you have to move to limit it. " Bill Clinton, 4/19/94, MTV's "Enough is Enough"